Anthem Next/2.0 Incoming Soon (TM)

Er, lol - no, it isn't.

At this point it's almost becoming standard practice to not fare good at launch and have resurrection some time later. People remember FFXIV, because it was so overt with the way it changed - what with the whole ending of old campaign and relaunching the title and so on.

But neither Elder Scrolls Online, Diablo 3, The Division, Destiny, Rainbow Six Siege, Warframe, No Mans Sky, Sea Of Thieves (that is in the process of making a comeback) or effing WOW (I guess it's justified by passage of time to remember that it had a bad launch) have simply not turned the servers or old versions off, but changed more gradually over time, which is what they're planning to do with Anthem.

No, they didn't. ESO launched in April 2014. Tamriel Unlimited update in June 2015 was when they've finally passed the largest hurdles, but things really began turning around after Morrowind expansion in 2016, 2 years after launch. It was a pretty stagnant period before Tamriel Unlimited and there was still A TON of work to do after that update. It's how I've found Bioware btw, since I was the person who played since launch and there was really not much else to do there at the time. So I know that the whole 'one year is when they must turn things around' is bunk.

I mean, never mind that Bioware - and specifically Bioware Austin - already has experience in turning things around after more than a year. SWTOR didn't make over a billion dollar because they don't know how to do this.

It took 2 years for Diablo 3 to change as well.

Loot 2.0 released mid 2014, Diablo 3 released mid 2012.

I think WoW is an exception in your examples - it's changed over time but for the worse

Nah, when they redid FFXIV for 2.0 the number of main development staff may have spiked a couple of hundred, two hundred to maintain the original game, but they were still working on many other games simultaneously. It most definitely wasn't the full studio

It would be nice to have more devs working on it full time TBH

Numbers are here - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/6f76zy/the_ffxiv_dev_team_changes_over_time/

I wasn't playing enough back then and thus didn't pay that much attention to game news.... and I still remember the failed Diablo 3 launch, haha.

As for WoW - it is also the oldest out of given examples, so it had time to grow, decline and even have its classic version back online I mean, as much as I wish Anthem success I don't think they're aiming for staying online with this game for over 15 years (although who knows what'll happen) - though I suspect that, if they succeed, they likely have quite a few years of expanding the game and the universe, thus making it one of classic Bioware franchises.

For myself, I really enjoyed the game for the most part and have put over 400+ hrs in over the past year. Its flaws are obvious, especially after spending that much time with it, but there are significant enough elements of it that are salvageable that attempting an "Anthem 2.0/Next" relaunch is at least conceptually workable.

Looking at the game from bird's-eye view, you can see a potentially cool CO-OP looter-shooter next to a potentially immersive, single player-focused RPG world but, in attempting to combine the two, they are more smushed together as opposed to elegantly entwined. With flying and combat, you can start to see the potential of the Javelins a unique third-person experience and how fun it is to combine you efforts with three other players with different powers to take different enemies. With the characters, lore, and animations, you get to scratch the service of a new, unexplored world rife with factions vying for control over what feels like a frontier outpost with all sides of opposition challenged by the ever-changing and mutating world they are trying to survive in.

I look at that and see potentially a traditional 40-50hr BioWare single player campaign where Dax, Brin, and Rythe (among others) comprise your party NPCs with whom you can travel in groups of 3 or 4 to take on missions while non-party NPCs like Tassyn, Matthius, Yarrow, and Vule can advocate for the different factions, fight off outlaws, Dominion and Scars, and investigate intrigue in Fort Tarsis.

From there, you can switch over to the multiplayer/CO-OP mode to complete daily, weekly and monthly challenges, complete seasonal objectives, build out your Javelin's loadout with loot-based weapons, gear and support materials while earning coin you can exchange for cool armor sets, vinyls, decals, etc.

Unfortunately, by trying to have them both feed into and influence each other neither is a satisfactory experience. If I had "dream" redesign, I'd lean into the "BioWare-esque RPG" side and make traversing Fort Tarsis third person perspective, make the conversations also third-person perspective with more conversation options, have the Javelins have an overt story behind them and their design and purpose as opposed to being triggered by leveling and it's story a simple codex entry, explain why you, personally, chose to be a Freelancer as opposed to a Sentinal or part of Corvis, give further back-history into the origins of the scars, give clearer objectives to the outlaws and give more faces to the Dominion (further agency beyond "enemy"), let us flirt with Tassyn or Maxine, the bar owner, or Brin...

Maybe it defeats the purpose of what they were attempting...maybe they were unsure what they were attempting...but maybe it would align closer to an audiences expectations.

Casey started this ball rolling in 2012 shortly after ME3's release and was part of it's initial conceptual phase before leaving 2 years later in 8/2014. I wonder if him coming back to "Anthem" three years later was reminiscent of that Donald Glover gif of him to returning with pizzas and everything is on fire. Obviously, getting the game out was priority one and getting BioWare vets like Mark Darrah and Mike Gamble on board in late 2017/early 2018 was likely in aid of that. Now? Casey is the face of "Anthem" once again...I'm genuinely curious where he takes it from here.

Uh ... yeah. I hope you didn't take any bets on that.


I hope you didn't take any bets on this, either.


Oh, they have. Just ... well, not in a good way.

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- Diablo 3 didn't truly turn around until the Reaper of Souls (and Loot 2.0) came out, which was nearly two years after it launched.
- The Division 1 didn't truly see big positive reception until patch 1.8, which also came out nearly two years after the game launched.
- Destiny, while typically righting itself within a year (w/ expansions like Forsaken and The Taken King), has been a series rife with several fuck-ups.
- Warframe took several years to get itself to where it is now (with things like Parkour 2.0), and Digital Extremes has somewhat hurt their reputation with the December release of Emperyian. It added a game mode that, while cool in concept, had extremely poor balancing and the RNG grind associated with it was abysmal. They've improved it somewhat, but a lot of fans of the games say they wish DE had simply waited till this year before releasing it.

The only looter-shooter that's come out rather unscathed in all of this is Borderlands; specifically Borderlands 2. Borderlands 3 had a good early-mid game, but it didn't bring a substantial endgame experience, and additional hotfixes brought a lot of ire from the community; due to many skill nerfs.

While I think Anthem screwed up to a more noticeable degree than those other games, the fact that these other games still exist kinda showcases the resilience of games within the genre.

Anthem lost 2 directors. That's people who steer. Robertson was supposed to lead the online service to calm waters. And the other one brought it just over the finish line.
Doesn't take negative bias to notice a situation there.

The more I think about it the more pissed off I get.  It's like the Astro's press conference today, "oh yep, we cheated, we won the world series in 2017, it had no effect on the outcome, get over it".  BW's half baked statement about dev'ing and putting out 2.0 was a crap show.  Once they come out and tell it like it is/was, I might buy in.  I know we shouldn't dwell on the past, but dammit, they got my $60 plus and really don't seem to give a sh!t.  Last thought, if they end up charging us for whatever 2.0 is, there will be a revolt, calling it now.